UFOpaedia Entry

Proposal

Commander, we made an extremely interesting find on the UFO we disassembled. It carried an advanced and highly dangerous onboard missile launcher, using powerful magnetic rails to accelerate its missiles to hypersonic speeds before they even leave the launch tube.

We want to investigate this launcher and determine whether or not it can be adapted to fit on PHALANX aircraft, or even if it can be applied to other purposes. This launcher system would be far more effective in bringing down UFOs than our Sparrowhawks, possibly even more effective than our current SAM systems. If we can adapt it we stand to gain a substantial boost to the firepower of our whole airfleet as well as ground-based missile systems.

Please approve this program whenever you can, Commander.

--Cdr. Navarre

Result

Commander, we've finished work on the alien missile launcher. It's a fairly simple affair. Firing is computer-driven, fed directly from the UFO's targeting computer. Powerful electromagnetic coils around the launch tube accelerate the missile to extreme speeds, reaching up to Mach 4 at the point where the missile leaves the tube. Only once the missile is fully free of the tube do its onboard rockets kick in.

The good news is that we've managed to succesfully adapt fittings, controls and power feeds to allow the Alien Launcher to be safely mounted to our aircraft. The bad news is that we've had to drastically reduce its magazine size in order to meet weight and size restrictions on our aircraft.

Our aircraft are too small and light to be able to carry so many, and most of our craft aren't laid out with internal missile magazines. We've had to custom-build a magazine mounted with the launcher, the capacity of which falls behind the stores found on UFOs.

It's not all doom and gloom, though. We believe that we can modify the launch tube to be able to fire human missiles as well as the alien type. We'd have to develop the missile ourselves, of course -- no current human missile is capable of withstanding the stress of being fired from this launcher. However, we're confident we can design a missile that will survive launch and incorporates new UFO-tracking technologies to improve homing and ECM capability.

I'll send you a design proposal as soon as I can, Commander.

--Cdr. Navarre

Research Tree Data

(This information for reference only; do not translate or include in-game.)